Test lab inside ESXi

[cliffwilliams]

I have tried to follow the setup instructions for a test lab but am running into some difficulty. I am assuming that I may need to setup a router after the WANOS VMs. Here is my setup.

I have 3 virtual switches setup without physical adapters, [Local1], [WAN], [Local2].

Workstation1 <-->[Local1]<-->WanOSCore<-->[WAN]<-->WanOSEdge<-->[Local2]<-->Workstation2

I have tried several IP configurations.
1st: Workstation 1 (192.168.1.100), WanOSCore (192.168.1.200), WanOSEdge (192.168.2.200), Workstation2 (192.168.2.100)

If this senario I cannot access any machine across the [WAN] vswitch. I tried setting the gateways on each subnet to the WANOS IP with no luck there.

2nd: Workstation 1 (192.168.1.100), WanOSCore (192.168.1.200), WanOSEdge (192.168.1.201), Workstation2 (192.168.1.50)

In this senario I can ping the Edge server from workstation 1 but cannot ping workstation2 nor vise-versa.

I have verified that the right NICs are connected to WAN and LAN on the WANOS VMs. I believe I need to put a router VM between the WANOS VMs and the [WAN] vswitch. Is that correct?

[ahenning]

Hi Cliff,

Thanks for posting this interesting scenario. In fact I will make a new blog post about the ESXi lab scenario.

Ok, first things first. Scenario-2 is the way to build the test lab. I think you have it about 99% configured correctly. All that is needed is to enable promiscuous mode on the vswitches (if you used separate ones) or on the port groups level (if you used vlans). To enable promiscuous configure the vswitch and then edit the security settings and select accept promiscuous.

Another way to build a lab is to use three VLANs in the same offline vswitch. In the image below I created three port groups, each with a VLAN. Like in your example I used WAN (Vlan10) Local1 (Vlan11) and Local2 (Vlan12). The topology then looks the same:

server1--[Local1]--wanos-core--[WAN]--wanos-edge--[Local2]--PC2

The vSwitch configuration for this topology:


Just for the record here is also a screenshot of the promiscuous mode configuration:


A diagram of the virtual network:


Since the devices have a software link between them consider enabling the WAN Simulation for testing purposes.

For more detailed steps the ESXi Lab Guide is available http://wanos.org/wanop/?p=1324